Gonzalez v. Collins

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• Decided: May 11, 2026
• Docket: 26-1213
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

Case: 26-1213 Document: 20 Page: 1 Filed: 05/11/2026

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

MANUEL GONZALEZ, JR., Claimant-Appellant

v.

DOUGLAS A. COLLINS, SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, Respondent-Appellee ______________________

2026-1213 ______________________

Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in No. 24-2760, Judge Scott Laurer. ______________________

Decided: May 11, 2026 ______________________

MANUEL GONZALEZ, JR., San Antonio, TX, pro se.

LAURA OFFENBACHER ARADI, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Jus- tice, Washington, DC, for respondent-appellee. Also repre- sented by MARTIN F. HOCKEY, JR., PATRICIA M. MCCARTHY, BRETT SHUMATE; EVAN SCOTT GRANT, Y. KEN LEE, Office of General Counsel, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC. ______________________ Case: 26-1213 Document: 20 Page: 2 Filed: 05/11/2026

Before PROST and TARANTO, Circuit Judges, and KOVNER, District Judge. 1 PER CURIAM. Manuel Gonzalez, Jr., appeals a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”) dismissing his appeal to that court for lack of jurisdiction. We affirm in part and dismiss in part. BACKGROUND I In March 2011, Mr. Gonzalez—a U.S. Air Force vet- eran—requested service-connected disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) for various con- ditions. In February 2013, a VA regional office (“RO”) granted the request as to one condition but not the others. Later, in April 2022, Mr. Gonzalez requested that the VA revise its February 2013 decision due to clear and un- mistakable error (“CUE”). The RO denied that request in January 2023 and provided Mr. Gonzalez with a notice of his appeal rights. Mr. Gonzalez then tried to appeal the RO decision to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals (“Board”) by filing a VA Form 21-0958 Notice of Disagreement. VA Form 21-0958 was used for appeals to the Board under the so-called legacy appeals system—a system that was phased out in accordance with the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 (“AMA”), Pub. L. No. 115- 55, 131 Stat. 1105. In March 2024, Mr. Gonzalez contacted the VA hotline to inquire about his appeal. The Board responded with a March 18, 2024 letter saying that “no appeal has been

1 Honorable Rachel P. Kovner, District Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation. Case: 26-1213 Document: 20 Page: 3 Filed: 05/11/2026

GONZALEZ v. COLLINS 3

docketed at the Board.” App’x 15. 2 The letter advised Mr. Gonzalez that, if he was dissatisfied with the RO’s Jan- uary 2023 decision, he should refer to the page titled “Your Right to Seek Review of Our Decision” that had been pro- vided contemporaneously with that decision. See App’x 15. Mr. Gonzalez wrote back, disputing that no Board appeal had been docketed. On April 9, 2024, the Board responded with another letter, which said that “the Board is unable to make a decision until the appeal is correctly filed” and ad- vised Mr. Gonzalez that, “[t]o appeal a claim denied by the [VA], [he should] complete the VA Form 10182, Decision Review Request: Board Appeal, which is available at www.va.gov/decision-reviews/board-appeal/.” App’x 23 (emphasis removed). In July 2024, the VA sent another letter to Mr. Gonzalez saying essentially the same thing: We received mail indicating that you would like us to review a claim . . . that we previously denied. VA regulations require you to file this request on the proper form. We received VA Form 21-0958, Notice of Disagree- ment (NOD) on February 8, 2024. . . . [T]he NOD form changed to VA Form 10182 for any benefit de- cision made on or after February 19, 2019. App’x 29. II Mr. Gonzalez appealed the Board’s March 18, 2024 let- ter to the Veterans Court. The government moved to dis- miss his appeal for lack of jurisdiction, arguing that there was no Board “decision” to appeal. The Veterans Court in- itially agreed with the government and therefore dismissed the appeal. See App’x 27 (“Because in its March 18, 2024[] letter the Board did not grant or deny a VA benefit,

2 “App’x” refers to the appendix included with the government’s informal response brief. Case: 26-1213 Document: 20 Page: 4 Filed: 05/11/2026

[Mr. Gonzalez] may not appeal the contents of the letter to this [c]ourt—the letter does not contain the kind of Board decision that 38 U.S.C. §§ 7252 and 7266(a) refer to.”). Before the Veterans Court entered judgment, Mr. Gon- zalez sought reconsideration of the dismissal, which the court granted. The court concluded that its recent decision in Cardoza v. McDonough, 37 Vet. App. 407 (2024)—which had issued less than two weeks after its dismissal of Mr. Gonzalez’s appeal—compelled the conclusion that the March 18, 2024 letter was indeed an appealable Board de- cision. App’x 39–40. Months later, however, the Veterans Court—acting through a different judge this time—effectively reconsid- ered the reconsideration and once again dismissed the ap- peal. It reasoned that the March 18, 2024 letter was not an appealable Board decision after all. See App’x 7–8. The court acknowledged Cardoza but did not explain why it did not control. Nor did the court otherwise explain why the prior decision on reconsideration was incorrect. Instead, the court viewed that decision as having only preliminarily resolved the jurisdictional issue. The court also relied heavily on the absence of subsequent argument from Mr. Gonzalez as to why the March 18, 2024 letter consti- tuted an appealable Board decision. See App’x 2–3, 6–7. And, it added, even if the March 18, 2024 letter were an appealable Board decision (that is, even if the court had jurisdiction), it would still dismiss, because (1) the only is- sue on appeal would be whether Mr. Gonzalez’s VA Form 21-0958 “initiated a valid appeal”; and (2) Mr. Gon- zalez had not supplied any argument on that issue. App’x 7. Mr. Gonzalez then sought a panel decision from the Veterans Court under Rule 35 of the Veterans Court’s Rules of Practice and Procedure. A panel granted the re- quest but ordered that the most recent single-judge deci- sion remained the decision of the court. App’x 42–43. The Veterans Court then entered judgment. Case: 26-1213 Document: 20 Page: 5 Filed: 05/11/2026

GONZALEZ v. COLLINS 5

Mr. Gonzalez timely appealed to this court. DISCUSSION This court has limited jurisdiction to review Veterans Court decisions. Although we have jurisdiction to “decide all relevant questions of law,” we generally may not review either “a challenge to a factual determination” or “a chal- lenge to a law or regulation as applied to the facts of a par- ticular case.” 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(1)–(2). Even giving Mr. Gonzalez’s filings in this appeal a lib- eral reading due to his pro se status, we discern (at most) just one argument raising a legal issue within our limited jurisdiction. Specifically, Mr. Gonzalez appears to argue that res judicata principles render a tribunal’s prior rulings in a given proceeding final and not subject to change in that same proceeding. See Appellant’s Informal Br. 2 (arguing with reference to the Cardoza-based reinstatement of his Veterans Court appeal and the later dismissal). This view of the law is incorrect. Res judicata principles of claim and issue preclusion generally become relevant only after a fi- nal judgment has been entered in a different proceeding; they do not bar reconsideration of rulings (let alone inter- locutory ones) within the same proceeding. See, e.g., First Mortg. Corp. v. United States, 961 F.3d 1331, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (elements of claim preclusion); Shell Petro- leum, Inc. v. United States, 319 F.3d 1334, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (elements of issue preclusion); Senza-Gel Corp. v. Seiffhart, 803 F.2d 661, 667 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (deeming res judicata effects “simply inapplicable” within the given case because no final judgment had been entered); see also Mitchell L. Firm, L.P. v. Bessie Jeanne Worthy Revocable Tr., 8 F.4th 417, 420–21 (5th Cir. 2021) (rejecting the no- tion that “a judgment in [a] first action is ‘res judicata’ on itself,” because “res judicata is a doctrine that bars a second action based on a valid final judgment in the first action” (emphasis in original)). We therefore reject Mr. Gonzalez’s argument in this regard. Case: 26-1213 Document: 20 Page: 6 Filed: 05/11/2026

Mr. Gonzalez’s other arguments do not raise issues within our limited jurisdiction. For example, he argues that the Veterans Court panel “engaged in conduct preju- dicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business” of that court. Appellant’s Informal Br. 2. But this argument does not raise a legal issue within our juris- diction. Similarly, in his informal reply brief, Mr. Gonzalez appears to argue that Rule 35 of the Veterans Court’s Rules of Practice and Procedure required the full Veterans Court to review his appeal. See Informal Reply Br. 9. But this argument is essentially “a challenge to a law or regulation as applied to the facts of [this] particular case,” which we lack jurisdiction to review. See 38 U.S.C. § 7292(d)(2). We note finally that this entire dispute (starting with the noted absence of a Board-docketed appeal) apparently stems from Mr. Gonzalez’s use of what the VA considers to be the wrong form. We note further the government’s rep- resentations in this appeal that (1) “because Mr. Gonzalez is attempting to appeal the denial of a CUE motion, the question of whether his VA Form 21-0958 initiated a valid appeal of the January 2023 RO decision would have no bearing on the effective date of any award”; and (2) “he may simply file a new CUE motion at any time given that the underlying decision being challenged for CUE is [an RO] decision.” Appellee’s Informal Br. 9 n.2. CONCLUSION We have considered Mr. Gonzalez’s remaining argu- ments and find that none raises an issue within our limited jurisdiction. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm in part and dismiss in part. AFFIRMED-IN-PART, DISMISSED-IN-PART COSTS No costs.